Third Text

Accessibility

Third Text website has been built with findability, accessibility and usability in mind, so we hope you can find, access and use the information you need. This page explains the accessibility features available on the web site.

Clicking a link below will scroll the page to the relevant section.

Back

1. Access Keys (shortcuts)

2. Hearing websites

3. Text size

4. Magnifying the screen

5. Using different stylesheets

6. Make the mouse pointer bigger

7. Slowing down the mouse

Click on a link above to scroll the page to the relevant section.

Access Keys (shortcuts)

You can navigate to the sections this site using your keyboard. Available shortcuts are:

Home = 1

About us = 2

Journal = 3

Online = 4

News & events = 5

Contact = 6

Book = 7

To use the access keys, you press the "Alt" key and the number or letter above, then press "Enter". On a Mac you press the "Ctrl" and key and the number or letter. "Ctrl" and "Alt" in Safari.

Back to the top

Hearing websites

There are some programs available which allow your computer to talk to you.

Windows users:

Windows Narrator is a basic screen-reading program, offering speech feedback for all menus and dialog boxes, Windows Explorer and Notepad but will not speak out a whole Word documents or web page. There are however, a number of text to speech programs available any selected text to be spoken back to the user.

(Window's Narrator is currently only available for Windows 2000 and XP)

Mac OS:

Go to 'System Preferences' and select 'Universal Access'. From here you can turn on the text to speech function.

Back to the top

Text size

You can control the size of the text and change fonts if you wish. Here's how...

To change the text size in Internet Explorer (a typical Windows browser):

  • Select View in the menu bar
  • Select Text Size
  • You'll get a list of different font (text) size options –choose the size that's appropriate for you.

To display web page text in a different font in Internet Explorer:

  • Go to the Tools menu and click on Internet Options
  • On the General tab, click Fonts
  • In the Web page font and Plain text font lists, click on the fonts that you want to use.

To change the text size in Safari (a typical Mac OS X browser):

  • Select the View menu from the Finder bar
  • Select Make Text Bigger and choose the size that's appropriate for you.
  • In addition to text size – the font type (i.e. Arial, Verdana, etc) is also selectable via the browser.

To display web page text in a different font in Safari:

  • Select Safari in the menu bar then Preferences
  • Go to Appearances and choose the font
  • Click on the red button to close the window

Back to the top

Magnifying the screen

You could try magnifying the screen if increasing the text size does not make text easy to read.

Windows users:

All recent versions of Windows include magnification software. This allows you to greatly increase text size, but is restricted to a small portion of the screen.

To use Windows magnifier click on the 'Start' menu, then select 'Programs', 'Accessories', 'Magnifier'. The settings dialog box will appear; from here you can adjust the magnification as desired.

Mac OS users:

Go to 'System Preferences' and click on 'Universal user'. Here you can magnify the screen and have the option to turn on the 'text to speech' function.

Back to the top

Using different stylesheets

You can find free tools to help you create your own stylesheet on the web. By doing this you can specify the text colour, font type and size, background colours etc. to suit you. Once you have created your own stylesheet you can apply it to our website.

Internet Explorer:

Click on the 'Tools' menu, then on 'Internet Options'. This brings up a dialog box. Select 'Accessibility' to bring up another dialog box. From here you can attach your stylesheet by ticking the 'Format documents using my style sheet' checkbox. Click on the 'Browse' button and select the stylesheet you want to use.

Opera:

Go to 'File', 'Preferences' and select 'Page Style' from the list on the left hand side. From the drop down menu next to 'Default Mode', select 'User Mode' from the list. Click on the 'Choose' button under 'My Stylesheet' to find your stylesheet and attach it.

Mozilla Firefox:

Go to Firefox > Preferences. Select 'Content' then click on 'Colors'. Choose Text and Background colours. Untick 'Allow pages to choose their own colors instead of my selections above'

Back to the top

Make the mouse pointer bigger

Windows users

  • Click Start button > Control Panel > Switch to Classic View > click on Mouse icon
  • Select Pointers tab > choose a mouse pointer > click OK

Mac OS users

  • Select the Apple button in the menu bar > System Preferences
  • Go to Universal Access > Mouse & Track pad
  • Make the mouse pointer bigger by sliding the Cursor Size bar

Back to the top

Slowing down the mouse

Windows user

  • Click on Start button > Control Panel > Switch to Classic View
  • Click on Mouse icon > select Pointer Options tab > adjust Select pointer speed > click OK

Mac OS X users

  • Go to Apple icon in the menu bar > System Preferences > Keyboard and Mouse
  • Select the Mouse tab > change the Tracking Speed slider to adjust the speed

Back to the top